GREENBELT, Md., Aug. 24 (UPI) -- New insights into a cosmic accident that has been streaming powerful X-rays toward Earth since late March have been provided by two published U.S. studies.
NASA's Swift satellite first alerted astronomers to the intense and unusual high-energy flares from a new source in the constellation Draco, a release from the space agency said Wednesday.
"Incredibly, this source is still producing X-rays and may remain bright enough for Swift to observe into next year," said David Burrows, professor of astronomy at Penn State University and author of one of the studies. "It behaves unlike anything we've seen before."
Astronomers have determined the source, known as Swift J1644+57, is the result of an extraordinary event, the awakening of a distant galaxy's dormant black hole as it shreds and consumes a nearby star.
A separate study by Ashley Zauderer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., said the X-rays are caused by jets of matter streaming away from the black hole at almost the speed of light along its spin axis as it consumes the star.
In the case of Swift J1644+57, astronomers say, one of these jets happens to point straight at Earth.
